My brother and I cross our legs as we sit facing our grandparents, a plush blanket folded up into a square bridging the gap between our pairs. Bearing a plate of freshly cut Korean pears, my mother settles next to my father — adjacent to my seating. I wave away the bounty of fruit; the bowl of ddeokguk, a rice cake soup traditionally eaten on New Year’s, still weighs heavy in my stomach.
With a glowing smile, my grandmother spills four yut sticks from a bag onto the blanket. My grandfather reaches backwards to grasp a rather large poster with small circles arranged into a box with an “X” shape connecting the corners, and my brother and I begin to sort through our piggy banks in an almost desperate fervor. Four pennies, four dimes, four quarters. Even with my mental chant accelerating the speed that I sort at, my brother snickers victoriously as the three groups of coins trickle through his fingers as a measly two quarters perch, rejected, on my knee.
My grandmother throws the sticks first, cackling when she sees three land face up. She eyes each of us leerily, her fiendish smile daring us to score higher — we do not. She guffaws and throws the sticks once again, delighted to see three face her once again. “Geol!” Her cry lands on uncomprehending, un-Korean-speaking ears, but still, she places their quarter three spots from the starting circle.
My grandparents immigrated to the United States in 1971. Drawn by the “land of opportunity” and their trust in the power of hard work, they sacrificed their life in South Korea to start anew in a foreign land. They said they did it for family. For family. The all-excusing, all-confusing concept that caused my grandparents to uproot their lives to sail across the world. In Korea, my grandparents lived out in the country, constantly moving around to accommodate my grandfather’s field job; it was no place to raise a family, no place for a child to receive education. When my grandmother gave birth to my mother, they knew that their limited time had expired– it was time to move to America.
However, upon arrival, they struggled to find work; my grandfather’s previous work in engineering became obsolete when faced with American companies insisting his Korean degree to be void. So instead, my grandfather — my hardworking, brilliant grandfather — peddled wigs on the street. Their lack of knowledge in conversational English also proved to be no small obstacle, as the molehill of simple communication grew into a mountain. My grandparents cycled through many jobs: nursing homes, pastry shops, even more field work. It wasn’t until they opened a dry cleaners in 1984 that they could finally settle down, finally stop looking over their shoulder to see if poverty had caught up to them.
My mother rolls her eyes at my grandmother’s outburst, though clearly smothering an amused smile. Though her hand closes first around the sticks, my father’s immediate (and loud) complaints bring them reluctantly into his lap. He tosses them onto the blanket with a smug expression, almost certain that his luck would ensure a high roll. I cover my mouth to stifle a snort when only one stick lands facing up, and my mother retaliates by slapping him playfully on the back. “Do!” My grandmother doesn’t hesitate to call out the roll, and my mother drops their dime one place from the start.
My parents arrived in the United States during the same year: 1974. Even so, their childhood experiences could not be more different.
For the first few years of my father’s life in America, the transition was rough. Unable to communicate due to a complete inability to speak English and a lack of ESL classes to help him assimilate, he often grew frustrated at the absence of comprehension with his peers. Working multiple jobs, his father had no time to pass on the minimal English that he possessed. Rather, he decided — with the advice of my father’s teachers — that no one should speak Korean to my father. Until he reached eighteen, my father was not exposed to a lick of Korean. The “quick fix” worked, but it worked too well; having lost his only lingual connection to his home, my father in turn lost his proficiency in Korean. With no ties to South Korea, my father excelled on the social scene, making friends with ease and blending in with the other Americans at his school.
My mother, on the other hand, straddled the two cultures precariously in her younger years. Though difficult, her parents raised her with the “best of both worlds,” keeping the traditions that they knew while still encouraging her to adapt to American culture. With this softer approach, my mother learned the duties of being an American while still keeping a firm grasp on her mother tongue. However, with this determination to hold tight to her Korean identity came a host of new problems in the form of xenophobic peers and casual racism. The close-mindedness of her surroundings didn’t dissipate until college, when she found people more like her, more like home.
My parents met there, with my father attending NYU graduate school and my mother studying at NYU Stern. Without the cushion of parental guidance or funds throughout the college process, they both had to work their own way, pay their own way, and pave their own way through university. And even with these handicaps, my parents still succeeded; they rose above their past, their beginnings.
I snatch the sticks from the blanket gleefully, ignoring my brother’s sigh of exasperation. I launch the sticks at the blanket, eyes wide in anticipation. My grandmother inhales deeply as four sticks land facing down, and her voice sounds almost resigned as she states, “Yut.” Yut! That means we can roll again! My brother grabs the sticks before I can and rolls three: Geol. We choose to move one penny four places forward, and then we move another one three spots; our second displaces my grandparents’ quarter, and we knock it off the board victoriously.
Unlike the generations preceding us, my brother and I were born in the United States. We spoke the default language of the United States and acclimated effortlessly to the culture that was all that we knew. We did not need to worry about preserving the culture of our home because America was our home; Korean was our secondary. How much can be said for a culture that I never experienced? How much can I learn about a country that I had never been to?
Later in life, however, I learned of the sacrifices that my own parents had made to ensure that my brother and I escape the intolerant bullying and impoverished nights they were made to endure. My mother quit her job to care for our infant selves, and my father worked tirelessly so that we would not have to wonder where the next meal would come from, or whether we could attend college at all. My grandmother’s words ring true for their choices: “for family.”
The game continues. My brother and I shove, drop, and fight all four of our pennies to the end of the board, just beating out my grandparents, who come in second. Though my hard-faced grandfather would never admit it, he had strategically moved his quarters so that we could take them out easily. Unfortunately for my parents, he did not spare them the same sympathy, knocking them off the board at every chance he could get. When our pennies finally reached the end, he made a big show out of grudgingly handing over the ten dollars that we had all bet at the start of the game as my mother accused him of letting us win. My grandfather assured him that he would do no such thing, before winking as he passed me my share. As my thumb runs along the delicate edge of the ten dollar bill, my mind begins to wander.
Our family history cannot be told in a chapter, in a book, or even in a series; it cannot be bound to words and phrases, sentences and fragments. It cannot be contained to a gameboard, or even to a novel with page numbers exceeding the world population. Even so, I want to share the humble beginnings of the lives of my parents and grandparents in America. Though our history may be incomplete, I want to tell our story in the game that I grew up loving: Yut-Nori.
I may not yet be a mother, or an aunt, or even an older sibling. I may still be in college, working to find out who I am. However, in my identity, I know what will always be true; I know what my parents have taught me, what my grandparents have taught me. I know that I will always make choices for my family.
How to Play Yut-Nori:
To set up, you need four yut sticks, a game board, and four pieces per team. In my family, we used different sets of coins.
To decide who rolls first, every team throws the sticks once to see who has the highest roll. The highest roller gets to start.
There are six different ways to move.
Do: Move one forward when one stick lands face up.
Gae: Move two forward when two land face up.
Geol: Move three forward at three.
Yut: Surprise! You move four forward when four land facing down, and you also receive an extra turn.
Mo: Move five forward when all land facing up, and you gain an extra turn.
Backdo: Three are face down, with the other stick facing up with an X. Move backwards once.
If you land on another team’s piece, you get to knock your opponent off the board and you gain an extra turn.
Landing on corners means that you can take a shortcut and cross the diagonal bridge to the opposing side.
Every new roll means that you can consider moving an existing piece across the board, or place another of your four pieces at the start.
You win by getting all four of your pieces to the end of the board. Good luck!